


The Reality Of Our Condition

by TrishaCollins



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: "I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!" "I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD FIRST!" "YOU'RE NOT DEAD!", Canon is really just suggestion right?, For real though the idea is making me giggle., Gen, M/M, The real MVP here is Dr. Reed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 23:10:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15717009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrishaCollins/pseuds/TrishaCollins
Summary: He wakes up in the darkness.





	The Reality Of Our Condition

“Sh. Shhhhh.” 

The words, the flashing lights, the dirt and the pain all muddled together into a mess of color and senses. Nothing made sense. 

“Shhhh.” The voice was always there. “Shhhh.”

Snatches of conversations made it through. “Date-biotics. Shhhh. Quiet. Keep them quiet.” 

He tumbled in the timeless place he had fallen into, remembering lurching, falling, red lights blinking at him from every angle. 

“Shhh.”

He woke in complete darkness with the soft hum of machinery near his head. There was a faint cough to his left, and more rustling around him that gave him the sense of a very full space.

“Dose him again.” Someone whispered. “We need the fever to go down.”

“We could kill him.” A female voice replied. 

“If we can’t get the fever down, his brain will cook itself. We don’t have palliative care here, Teresa. He’s dead if we don’t. There’s no power and no ice. It’s the only thing we have for him, at least if he dies he will pass peacefully.” 

“Yes, doctor.” The female voice said sadly. 

More rustling, someone close to him, checking the machinery near his head. 

A light flashed over his face, and he squinted to try to make something out beyond it. But it went away just as quickly. “Awake?”

“I think so.” He answered, voice husky. 

“Your brain activity has been returning to normal over the past few days.” The voice was calm, male, and almost dispassionate. “We thought you weren’t going to make it for a little while there.”

“Where am I?” He asked the darkness. 

The light didn’t reappear. 

“Some of the boys found what was left of your ship in a field. You’re in the basement of  
Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital in Glasglow Montana. The world has ended, which I’m sure you know considering you were in a flight suit.” 

“Glasglow Montana.” He muttered. “Where….where is that?”

“Literally the middle of nowhere. I’m Dr. Reed, my assistant is Teresa Summers.”

“Adam. Adam West.” He responded, pitching his voice low to match the doctor. “Am I….what….” He was afraid to ask, worried what might have been done. He couldn’t _feel_ anything. 

“You’re been out for around three weeks. You lost a lot of blood, you had a concussion, there was some swelling in your brain but that’s gone down. Some internal bleeding, but we patched you up. You lost your left leg.” The words were blunt, calm. “Below the knee. It was caught in the wreckage of your ship.” 

“Why can’t I feel anything?” He asked, unable to quell the bubble of panic. He’d lost his leg? His 

“They’re sweeping the bigger cities. Drones even in the smaller ones. They haven’t made it all the way out here, but we’ve gotten a lot of injured, so it’s only really a matter of time. We’ve been keeping people under. You’ve been given a considerable amount of sedatives and pain medications to keep you asleep and quiet.” The doctor explained, light flashing on briefly to check over his leg. 

He could see the dressing, and the horrifying way it just ended. “I need to contact the garrison.”

“Communications aren’t working.” The doctor answered, and for a moment he saw him. He was young, maybe just barely out of medical school. Red hair and a smattering of freckles that made him look even younger. The light flicked off. 

“My ship?”

“Destroyed, we stripped and salvaged what we could, and burned the rest before they could come looking. You were the only one.” 

He closed his eyes, though he could barely tell in the darkness.

“You are one of the lucky ones, even if it doesn’t feel like it right now. We were able to remove the leg cleanly, you show no signs of secondary infection. We’re lost a lot of people since they came down.” 

He almost expected, then, questions. But the doctor didn’t say anything more. 

“So what now?”

“We can fit you with a basic prosthetic. Another few months and you could be walking again. Beyond that, nobody knows.”

It wasn’t the most comforting thing. “Where are you going to get a prosthetic? The world ended.”

“We have some. It may be a bit of trial and error to find one in our stock that fits you, but we can figure something out.” 

For a moment he was confused, but understanding followed quickly and his heart sank. “Oh.”

“We’ll make do, and survive for as we can.” The doctor patted his shoulder. “I can put you back under if you prefer.”

“No. I’d like to be awake for a while. Is my gear here?”

The pen light flicked on again, indicating a small pile near the head of his makeshift bed. Even his flight suit. The emergency pack didn’t even appear to have been pillaged. 

“I need to go look after my other patients.” Something was pressed into his hand. “Press this button if you need us, don’t call out.”

“Understood.” He said softly, running his hand over the device. He kept blinking, trying to adjust his eyes to the darkness. But nothing became clear. 

They were in a basement and efforts had been made to seal out natural light. 

He found his helmet with careful hands, running fingers over it. Silent and dark, the power pack that would have connected it to the mainframe was empty. 

Without a recharge, he was injured, somewhere far from the Garrison and the Galra were invading. 

The Galra were invading. Had invaded. Takashi had tried to warn them, Holt had warned them, but nothing they had done had prevented this. 

Voltron might come, but in his current state, he would not live to see it. 

Hopelessness crashed over him, defeat chasing the air from his lungs for a shocking moment. 

The irony of it nearly choked him. He had objected to Takashi going into space, had been sure that his partner would die, had thought for a time that Takashi _had_ died. The mission had been declared lost, and he had known nothing of the cover-up until Holt’s return. Takashi was presumably safer than he was right now. Far away with Voltron. 

And he had lost a leg, lost everything, was trapped in a tiny hospital with the promise of a dead man’s leg as his only chance of survival. 

Earth had not been the safe place to stay after all.


End file.
